INT: Shia LaBeouf

Shia
LaBeouf’s made quite a name for himself playing the part of
“annoying sidekick” in a variety of roles, most notably in
2005’s tragically overlooked

CONSTANTINE. Just recently, LaBeouf starred in DISTURBIA, a surprise
hit for the studio, and this summer, he gets to play another leading
man – complete with his own love story subplot – in

Michael

Bay

’s much-anticipated live-action
TRANSFORMERS
flick. At a
set visit a few months ago in downtown

L.A.

, LaBeouf took time out of his busy schedule of avoiding explosions
and getting yelled at by Bay in order to talk to a handful of online
journalists about experience making TRANSFORMERS. Check it out.

Shia
Laboeuf

Tell
us about the role you play.

I
play Sam Witwicky, aka Spike.

How
does your character interact with the robots?

He’s
the liaison between the robots – at least in our script – in a
way, he’s the liaison between the government and the robots.
Because it’s too outlandish for the government to cling on to,
this idea of this alien (invasion), and they’re too close-minded
to latch on to it, so they use me as a liaison between the idea of
what these things could be and what they actually are.

With
the autobots?

Right.
Because they make first contact with me because my great great
grandfather, Captain Archibald Witwicky, made first contact with
Megatron in the 1800s and had – I don’t know if I should be
giving this all away.

Yeah,
it’s okay.

…had
language and maps burned into his glasses through a laser. And the
glasses were passed on through lineage. And they wind up with me and
me trying to sell them on eBay, as well as his other items – his
compass and sextant and other things a 19^th century
seaman would use. And they come after me to retrieve these glasses,
which have the directions to where the energon cube is at.

This
is new territory for you.

Yeah,
it’s never been like this for me. Especially not with Michael Bay.
Michael Bay is the fastest, most intense director I’ve ever worked
with. The explosions are right here. They’re not CGI. The other
day they had me on top of one of these buildings, one-handed, with a
wire here and a wire there. It was insane. But that’s stuff that
you usually CGI. And Michael doesn’t CGI. He likes seeing the
immediate…he likes being able to go into his trailer and go,
“You’re never gonna believe what I just shot.” Rather than
have to wait for the CGI to be put into green screen, he likes to
see it immediately. Things like explosions are all very real.

Was
that the hairiest thing you had to do?

No.
I can’t even list what we’ve had to do. I’ve never had to do
anything like this. When we did Constantine and I Robot, it was very
minimal. Of course there was insane action. I had a shot gun and we
were shooting demons, but the demons weren’t there. They were
ridiculous men in green suits and codpieces. It wasn’t what this
is, which is you actually have a Bumblebee, or it’ll be a pole,
but you’ll see Megatron. He’s really there. And they really go
for it. It’s just very real. My job is very easy here. It’s very
reactionary, as opposed to having to conjure up these fantasies of
what I would think it would be, it’s there.

You
seem to be the right age to have played for these toys as a kid.

Yeah.
For me it wasn’t the comic book or even the toys. It was the
movie. Transformers the movie was like, that was my shit. It was
that and like Yogi Bear. That was like what I grew up on. Those were
my movies and I watched them over and over and over again. I must
have seen Transformers the movie 70 times before this was even in…

So
what’s it like for you to be in this movie now?

Well,
when you see Transformers the movie, Spike is only in like three
scenes. Then you find out he’s even more apparent in the comic
book. Other than the robots, he’s the only character that goes
back. So it’s very rewarding to be here. It’s also a humongous
thing for my career, as you could imagine. So on a number of levels
it’s very fulfilling to be doing this. Again, it’s a completely
different film, you know? My goal at the beginning of doing this was
to be as diversified as possible. This fits a part of filmmaking
that I would never have been a part of, nor would I have ever
thought of myself as being involved in this way. This is
always…Ben Affleck has that job, Josh Hartnett has that job, not
some Gary Shandling lookalike who…it’s not something you would
assume. I didn’t assume that I would ever be sitting with Turturro
and Megatron. It’s just a thought that you could ever conjure up.

Last
year in Toronto you said you wanted to do more indie stuff…

Well,
I have two indies coming out that are…we had a good time at
Sundance with A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which is coming
out soon. I have Bobby coming out, which is an independent which has
now transformed into this megapic. But I fulfilled my
independent…the whole goal of this is to find that balance. You
want to create a pop film but not sell out to make a shit pop film.
You know, there’s shit pop films and then there’s popular films.
This is not a shit pop film. This is a popular film with a
following.

This
isn’t f*cking Freaky Friday. There’s a huge difference. And the
difference for me, at least…if I’m not enjoying the script,
I’m definitely not going to enjoy the ride for three months.
It’s three months of your life and I’m very impatient. I could
definitely be in school and enjoying that side of my life. There’s
a reason that I take time out to come and do this. I don’t have to
work because I’m financially in trouble. It’s not that for me. I
do movies that I want to do. Disturbia – which is another popular
film, which is based on Hitchcock. Stuff that I’m interested in.

What
attracted you to the project?

You
know, the same reason that you guys are into it. The thought of
having something like an alien life form be able to take the form of
this and transform, it just became more real than, let’s say, E.T.
which was this magical figure that came down to earth and you’d
never seen anything like it, whereas the Transformers were real. It
was very real to me. If you had an imagination, you could sit there
and look at a car and go, “Yeah,” and you could conjure up ways
that it could transform. It was more real than fantasy for me.

The
same thing with Constantine – the reason that you…you do stuff
that you love. Like Neil Gaiman, Vertigo, that’s what I love. The
Transformers is that other side to me. It’s more popular, yes, but
it’s realistic to me. I really think that there is a possibility
that you could do some of the shit that we’re doing. I mean, some
of it is real. And it’s not like this fantasy, like this alien
life form that comes…it doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels
like it could really happen.

It’s
more tangible?

Correct.
It’s more tangible. That’s the word.

Seeing
that you’re part of the demographic, did you have more creative
input into the decisions?

No.
Everybody’s got their job and holds down the fort. I mean, Michael
Bay is very…he knows what he’s doing. It’s not like he comes
here and then is thinking of shots. He knows specifically…you used
to hear stories about how Kubrick used to draw everything and
create…and Michael works the same way in that he has these visual
effects shots that he created a year ago, that’s the actual shot
in animation form. Kubrick used to do these long-hand forms of his
film, whereas Michael has already filmed the movie in digital and
he’s got all these VFX shots of shit that’s already been
conjured.

So
in that respect it’s there. It’s not ever questioned. My opinion
means nothing as far as that goes. But Michael is very – and
I’ve worked with some pretty dope directors – he’s very
freeing. “This dialogue sucks!” He takes the page out and throws
it away. “Just roll with it.” He’ll let you…he ad-libs more
than any director I’ve ever worked for. He literally hires people
based on how they can ad-lib. In the auditions it was, “Ok, put
the script down and go,” for 20 minutes. Just go with this. When I
was auditioning with Megan, 70% of our audition was just riffing.
Where can you go?

How
can you keep it on the storyline without going in some weird place
that’s not helping us? And
that’s the way that Mike works. So people say that he’s not an
actor’s director and all this garbage and I don’t know. It
depends on what kind of direction you want. If you want somebody to
be there and be on you, and be the Woody Allen “Cough here and
breathe here and sneeze here,” he’s not that. He’s the
director who’s just gonna let you go. And so in a sense that is an
actor’s director.

What
message do you have for Transformers fans?

This
is…how do you describe what we’re doing? This is nuts. I’ve
never seen anything like it. We’re staying true to a lot of it.
But again, you can’t make Megatron a gun. You make Megatron a gun
and you’ve gotta have an orange cap, because you can’t make a
movie with a gun transforming when you’ve got kids out there
killing each other. You can’t publicize a gun like we used to in
the 80s, when Megatron was a gun. If you were to make Megatron a gun
now, you’d have to put the stupid orange cap and that would ruin
Megatron. He’d look like Herbie the Love Bug or some dumb shit. If
Bumblebee was a bug, it would be a totally different interaction.

You
wouldn’t look at Bumblee and go wow. You wouldn’t do that. You
would look at him like he was Herbie. And that’s not what
Bumblebee was. We stay true to the tone of what Transformers was.
But again, it’s a movie and in movies it’s a different art form.
You’re taking on another face. So you stay as true as you can and
there are certain things that you do have to extend for the film,
such as the human aspect of this. There wasn’t a lot of human
interaction in the Transformers movies. It was all about the
Transformers. But to just have the Transformers talking would be
like the new Ninja Turtles movie. It’s just garbage. Now it’s a
Pixar film. That’s not what we’re making. It’s not a Pixar
film. We’re trying to make the coolest action film ever. You gotta
make it human.

How
old is your character? Is he in high school?

Yeah,
he’s 18.

And
how old are you?

I’m
20.

So
yesterday you were hanging off a building. What are you doing today?

Today?
I know we’re blowing something up.
(laughter) I’m
not sure what it is yet. But we’re blowing something up for sure.

What
was your personal favorite Transformer?

My
personal favorite? Soundwave.
And he’s not in this film.

Are
you going to be made into an action figure?

I
hope not. I don’t know. They can do whatever they want. They have
their own contracts and I’m sure Hasbro is gonna try to profit off
of it as much as possible, just like any company would. I don’t
know.

It’s
the goal of the actor to make your presence felt. It’s your job to
position yourself and to hold your own and create a character and
not just get lost in the dust. It’s your job as an actor to do
that. Your job as an actor is to fill in the spaces. That’s my
occupation. So yeah, I can’t have Michael thinking about certain
minute character intricacies while he’s blowing up that building.
His thought is diverted. So it’s your job to control a lot of that
and Mike let’s you know that when you start. But I can see how
actors can get lost in this, when they’re relying on a director to
be emotionally prepared to deal with your intricacies and your
mannerisms and how you hold your hand and what pocket you put your
juice in. Michael Bay isn’t that guy. He’s not the guy to tell
you…Michael Bay is focused on the explosion in the building and
the reaction of the crowd and it’s a lot to think about for one
person. You expect that.

As
an actor, is it hard for you to hold on to what you’re doing when
the crap is blowing up?

No.
It’s easier when the crap’s blowing up. It’s harder when the
crap’s not blowing up and action – “The crap’s blowing up!
The crap’s blowing up!” That’s hard for an actor. Or
interaction with the robots is tough. It’s difficult to have any
kind of emotional connection with Bumblebee when it’s a pole with
plastic. But when you’re sitting there and Megatron is built,
it’s a different type of performance, because it’s reactionary
rather than conjured. Conjured shit is hard.

Since you were a fan of
the show, does it mean anything to you that Peter Cullen was cast as
the voice of Optimus?

Well, for everybody here that was a big deal. I know what it
means to you guys and what it means to the fans. Michael knows the
same. But then again you get into performance stuff – who’s
gonna bring the better performance? And when you start measuring the
original to maybe an update? You have to think about that stuff, you
know? If it had been Michael Clarke Duncan, would that have been a
better voice in the original than Peter Cullen? A lot of people
would say no, but then there’s a fan base that would say yeah. So
you have to modernize it. And thank god we got him in because it
brings us back to…and we can still modernize the film but still
keep some of this historical truth in the voices of the characters.
So it’s a big win for all of us and we’re all excited to have
him. I haven’t met him yet or been able to work with him.

Are you signed up for a
sequel?

Uh, hmmm…yeah, I’m sure there’s something somewhere. I
don’t know. I was signed to do sequels for Constantine.

What is going on with
that?

Well it’s up to Keanu and where he wants to go. It really
comes down to what he wants to do on his slate. If he jumps up and
goes, “I want to play John again,” – which I don’t think he
will ‘cause that took a lot out of him – I don’t know. He
might; he might not. Again, people talk about an “I Robot”
sequel. Any movie that makes money, there’s gonna be sequels. They
made a Kangaroo Jack sequel, you know what I mean?
That’s Kangaroo Jack. They made money. It’s a business.
At the end of the day, it’s show business. It’s a business.

Are
there any cast or crewmembers that you talk to about the
Transformers as fans?

I
know Megan is a fan. I know Josh is a fan. I know that Turturro’s
son is a big fan. I know John is really into it based on what he’s
read. I don’t know if he was a fan previously. But when you’re
here and you’re seeing it, you’re a fan. You’re an instant
fan. When you see Bumblebee, you can’t not be a fan. When you see
the actual Bumblebee standing there, you can’t not be a fan.
It’s like seeing Batman’s car. You’re in right away. I’m
sold. Boom, there you go. Done.

What
does Dane Cook play?

Dane
Cook? I think he plays a gas station attendant. It’s a small
cameo. But there’s a lot of cameos, you know? The way that Michael
works is there’s action, and in the middle of the craziest action
there’s a joke. If you watch his films, that’s how he goes. He
genre-flips. So there’s a lot of humor with the action. Because we
have the humor aspect we bring comedians in. There’s a lot of
comedians here.

Any
other big cameos?

Bernie
Mac’s got a big cameo. I’m sure there’s other people coming
in. It changes every day. It’s a big movie, so there’s a lot of
people that want to be in it. They might create roles. I’ve heard
a lot of names, but I don’t want to throw them out there because I
might be wrong and you never know if they might come in or not.

Who’s
gonna be the breakout character?

I
don’t know. There’s a couple of them. They all have
personalities. I don’t know if I could point one out. There’s a
bunch of different storylines happening with different robots, but
of course it’s Megatron and Optimus. Those are the dudes.

What
about the love story?

The
love story element humanizes this. It humanizes the story a little
bit. Sometimes it gets fantastical when everything’s a robot or
everything’s and explosion or everything’s in the Secret
Service. People in Iowa want to relate to a character. The love
story humanizes the robot storylines.

Questions?
Comments? Manifestos? Send them to me at [email protected].